Previews

Sins of a Solar Empire -- Hands-on

It might be a sin, but going hands-on with Ironclad's new "4XRTS" feels pretty darned good.

Spiffy:

Fascinating use of "terrain"; Bounties; Good unit design; Fun multiplayer.

Iffy:

A bit of a learning curve; "Empire Tree" still needs work; Larger battles get unwieldy and slow.

We've been fascinated with Sins of a Solar Empire since it was first announced. The new "conquer the galaxy" RTS game created by the team at Ironclad Games aims to bring the epic scope and sweep of a "4X" strategy game in a real-time strategy format. Of course wanting to do this and actually pulling it off are two different things. Sins of a Solar Empire boasts a lot of new and untested gameplay concepts, which represents a big gamble. The more time we spend with the beta 3, though, the more our doubts have started to fall away. There's a long way to go before release and there are a whole lot of hurdles in the way (especially the learning curve inherent in playing something genuinely new), but even at this early stage, Sins of a Solar Empire looks and plays great.

The first thing that stood out in beta 3 is simply how much progress has been made since beta 2, especially the addition of multiplayer. While not perfect (there were occasional stutters), multiplayer stability and connectivity was much better than one might expect in a game's first multiplayer test. The beta 3 multiplayer was also our first chance to test out the game's "bounty system." This allows a player to place game credits in a pool that awards them to whoever manages to destroy ships or structures belonging to the targeted player (the money is awarded on a pro-rated percentage based on the value of the object destroyed until the pool is drained.) While the system is available in single-player games, it wasn't until we spent some time in multiplayer that we realized how brutal it could be.

First, the system is anonymous, so players can screw over "allies" by using money from trade agreements to put a price on their head. There are also AI pirate factions that respond to bounties. The constant harassment of pirates is something no player can ignore. Even better, it helps keep multiplayer games balanced by actually making it worthwhile for players to attack a much stronger opponent. In one game a seemingly dominant player suffered what might be called the "death of a thousand cuts" when the bounty got so large that at least three other wars were put on hold and two of the dominant player's allies switched allegiances to bite off a piece of that fat pool of credits.

One of the most interesting elements of the game is how Sins of a Solar Empire brings the idea of "terrain" into a space-based RTS. The battlefield in Sins is based on planets with "gravity wells" around them that are connected by hyperspace jump corridors. As a result player fleet movement is a function of the number of jumps it'll take to get to a particular planet. The new version of the beta offers a bunch of maps that play with this idea and demonstrate how merely shifting jump corridors around will dramatically alter the strategic picture.

The best example of this is a new map called "Gateway." Gateway is a 49-planet universe consisting of two star systems. The first system, Telos, is fairly standard circular chain around the star without any obvious choke points. The kicker is there's only one jump point to a neighboring star system called Xi that's just loaded with resources. This jump point is guarded by a planet called Gateway. Obviously, controlling Gateway is key to winning, but holding on to it can get pretty brutal. Alliances shift a lot and bounties fly fast and furious in Free for All games as players continually team up to take down whoever currently holds Gateway while Gateway's holder needs to exploit Xi for enough resources to either outbid all comers or put together fleets tough enough to hold off the combined forces of everyone else.